Military Officer - July 2006 - (Page 40) washingtonscene elimination of capital gains tax penalties for military homeowners, among many other accomplishments. Now, MOAA will take even greater advantage of his leadership and planning skills in his important new position. Cynthia Thompson, who has overseen the legislative action portion of the MOAA Web Base, also is moving to assume duties as the chapter affairs specialist in the Council and Chapter Affairs Department. Thompson has filled several important roles in her more than six years with Government Relations, including preparation, distribution, and management of legislative mailings and the weekly Legislative Update. Bret Shea, who has proven his mettle by handling most of the legislative inquiries for MOAA’s Member Service Center over the past year, now joins the Government Relations team to assume responsibility for oversight of legislation and benefits content for the Web and other media. We’re most fortunate to have the kind of talented and dedicated staff that allows this mutually beneficial crossover and helps MOAA grow on all fronts. Current law requires deduction of DIC (paid when death was service-connected) from any SBP annuity. Because the two are paid by different agencies and because survivors typically are unaware of the deduction requirement, many SBP-DIC widows encounter terrible problems in the recoupment process. In some cases, survivors receive a large retroactive DIC check from the VA, then a large bill from DFAS to recoup years of undeducted amounts from SBP, and then a later lump-sum refund of SBP premiums from DFAS for the share of SBP that they will no longer receive. The VA and DFAS representatives were sympathetic and interested in trying to find reasonable solutions to these confusing situations. They also were frank in acknowledging the problems of having 50 separate VA area offices communicate with DFAS and the challenges of changing a highly automated DFAS system that’s already struggling with recent SBP and concurrent receipt changes. For the VA, MOAA suggested consolidating SBP-DIC processing responsibilities in a smaller number of the best-performing regional offices to improve consistency and timeliness of communication with DFAS. For DFAS, MOAA suggested consolidating recoupment and refund notices to survivors to reduce confusion and allow the survivor to deal with a single notice of the net recoupment or refund, rather than getting a large bill and later a large refund. The VA and DFAS representatives agreed to bring those proposals and others back to their agencies for discussion. MO — Contributors are Col. Steve Strobridge, USAF-Ret., director; Col. Mike Hayden, USAFRet.; Col. Lee Lange, USMC-Ret.; Col. Bob Norton, USA-Ret.; Cmdr. René Campos, USN-Ret.; Cmdr. John Class, USN-Ret.; Cynthia Thompson; and Cass Vreeland, MOAA’s Government Relations Department. MOAA Pleads Widows’ Case VA, DFAS hear ideas to ease pain of recoupments. M 42 MILITARY OFFICER J U LY 2 0 0 6 OAA was pleased to host representatives from the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) and the VA April 26 for a discussion of problems experienced by Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) annuitants who are also eligible for Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) from the VA.
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.